In his paper “A New Cosmogony,” the Polish writer Stanislaw Lem asked how it can be possible that from the vast cosmos, most likely filled with intelligent beings other than ourselves, we have so far heard nothing. The problem is more commonly known as the Fermi Paradox: given the high probability that other intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, why does it seem that none of them has ever tried to contact us?
In his blazingly original paper, “Radio Astronomy as Epistemology,” our guest, philosopher Anthony Weston, formulates a response to the Fermi Paradox. What we take to be the silence of the universe, he suggests, may teach us more about ourselves–and the challenges of receptivity to nonhuman minds in general–than about the prevalence of other life. “Suppose,” he writes, for the sake of argument, “that some extra terrestrial intelligence briefly scans our portion of their sky in search of ‘messages.’ Could they recognize our TV transmissions–for them just one fluctuating electromagnetic impulse among billions of others…–as a product of intelligent beings? … A TV signal is certainly not constructed to be easily decoded by anyone else. We cannot assume,” he continues, “that the ETIs are so unlucky as to have thought of television.”
Continue reading Ep. 18 – Anthony Weston on animals, aliens and the silence of the universe